M
OTHER NATURE turned
on great weather for the four-
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Raceway just outside Goulburn NSW
for the recent 2017 Australian Historic
Road Race Championships. Solo
classes for the event range from really
old (1920) to getting old (1990) and of
course there are those mad men and
ladies racing sidecars.
The smell of methanol, racing
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air to help satisfy anyone’s petrol
head addiction.
The event includes a day of practice,
day of qualifying and two days of
racing. I was there with my mate Chris
and our rider was his IoMTT racer son,
Alex. The two bikes we took along were
our Suzuki GSX1100 racing in Period
5 Unlimited and the Yamaha FZR1000
racing in Period 6 Formula 1300.
We faced some top class competition
in our two classes, as did most other
classes with some amazingly fast and
tight racing. For Period 5 Unlimited
the four main contenders were Irish
and IoMTT road racer, Paul Byrne
(McIntosh Suzuki), Aussie superbike
racer, Chas Hern (T-Rex Honda),
ex-250 proddie racer, Ken Watson
(Yamaha TZ750) and Alex. This is also
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unfortunately couldn’t send Alex out as
the big CR carbs on the GSX decided
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essentially end our chances of this bike
taking Alex to the podium, due to a
zero point score where our competition
scored 25, 20 and 18; but it didn’t stop
him from coming from the back of
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in the next two races with the fastest
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Sunday afternoon.
In Period 6 there were a few
more contenders for the podium- Supersport and Superbike racer,
Aaron Morris (Yamaha FZR1000),
Superbike racer, Chas Hern (Yamaha
FJ1200), Alex on our Norton/
Yamaha FZR1000, Superbike racer,
Murray Clark (Suzuki GSX-R1100)
and super quick classic racer, Steve
Kairl (Yamaha FZR1000). This is
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As our FZR1000 is essentially still a
brand new bike, Chris, Alex and I have
a lot to learn and sort out with most
areas of the bike. It’s not far away
from being right but learning how,
what, why with this bike costs quite a
bit of time on the stopwatch. Alex got
fourth in the second race as we tried a
tune up that cost us most of our top
end power. For the third race we’d got
most of this power back but it wasn’t
until the last race that Alex could really
start to use some of the package that
we’ve got. He was all over the back
of Chas Hern on his lightning fast
T-Rex Racing FJ1200 but sat behind as
passing him wouldn’t have made anyThree clowns...sitting on a
wall...discussing race strategy.
Or is that, “What’s for dinner
tonight? Frankfurt again?”